If Vice President Yemi Osinbajo expected a public outrage at his latest revelation that the whopping sums of N100 billion and $289 million were embezzled by the Goodluck Jonathan administration weeks to the 2015 elections, he must be disappointed by now.

Up till now, nobody is exactly asking for Jonathan’s head on a spike. Osinbajo has confirmed people’s suspicion: that Buhari, the man who was elected to tear down the temple of corruption in Nigeria is not as potent a force as he was marketed. Nigerians that thought they were getting two raging bulls must be wondering how they ended up with these hand-wringing jokers. Osinbajo should not be surprised at the yawns and wrinkled noses he got from Nigerians for his exposé, people now think that still blaming Jonathan is an old subterfuge considering everything else that has befallen us under Buhari.

If Jonathan and his merry band stole so much and up till now, the best you do is throw out repetitive lines of how much he stole; maybe you should not be in government. Nigerians voted you to fight corruption, not to join them to moan about it.

This day three years ago, it was five days before the presidential elections. Everywhere you turned at that time, you heard “Sai Baba” chanted to the tune of “anti-corruption.” Followers of the candidate and now President, Muhammadu Buhari, evangelized about the coming of this messiah whose no-nonsense stance will cleanse Nigeria’s Augean stables for good.

Even his former foes forgave him without him asking. Buhari himself, aware of the weight of expectations imposed on him, sold himself as the karma of corruption in Nigeria. Everywhere he went, he sang about fighting corruption and Nigerians rocked themselves to its sonic sensation.

When Buhari was first sworn in, bragging about what Jonathan’s administration had done wrong was the most priced and bestselling share on the stock market, and the APC — still basking in the euphoria of unexpected victory — made huge dividends out of it. Almost three years after he was sworn in, the folks who rhapsodized about Buhari’s anti-corruption agenda have found that he was no different from his predecessor. He is just as clueless, and corruption — Nigeria’s Frankenstein monster — has once again swallowed another one of its creators. Post-2015 Nigeria is still in the doldrums of ineptitude, nepotism, tribalism, and uncontained violence.

Osinbajo is still talking about what Jonathan did wrong when their government has barely been able to do a single thing convincingly right.

Osinbajo was also quoted as saying that at some point, those who promoted strategic alliance contracts between the NNPC and the NDPC made away with almost one-tenth of our national reserves! That is a mind-boggling amount. Such a theft ought to be thoroughly investigated and punished, and not just crunched into a sensational speech at an occasion. Osinbajo, again, said that it was only in talking about such mega-thefts that we could resolve such thieving.

True, he has a point that such scams need to be addressed, but he seems to forget that talking is all Buhari’s government has done till now. People are tired of accusations; they are tiring and demoralizing. What we want to see is what the government under his watch has done about such embezzlements. How many of those people have been tried and how many are on their way to jail now? If nothing of the sort has been done, then what is the point of informing us who stole what? You are only confirming that you are weak, and your government is more or less a paper tiger.

Mentioning Jonathan’s name alone used to be a potent means of whipping Nigerians into frenzied outrage about “corruption,” but people seem to be fatigued about the unending talk of what is wrong; they want transparency, reforms, and action. They are bored with people like Osinbajo constantly revving the engine of a vehicle that has no wheels.

Not only are officials of this administration adept at just talk, they, in fact, act as a striptease. Just a few days ago, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), also said that if he released details of the allowances of the principal officers of the National Assembly, Nigerians would be shocked. But what exactly would be shocking to Nigerians about his revelations considering that Sagay already informed Nigerians last year that lawmakers earned as much as N29m monthly? What else is “shockable” about what he has to reveal?

At worst, he will reveal that Senate President, Bukola Saraki possibly earns N1bn monthly. Even if we find out that things are that sordid, what exactly is the reaction he expects the shock we will experience to solve?

Sagay thinks Nigeria will explode if people find out what the lawmakers cost them but most people know, just like they know that Buhari’s budget is just as padded as was his predecessors’. They just insist on keeping their sanity intact by ignoring their thieving leaders. I think Sagay — much like Peter Obi who also teased us with information about what governors earn — is over-estimating the capability of Nigerians to be still shocked with the mindless looting that goes on in the country every day. Nigerians have come to realize that both the APC and the PDP are bad for their mental and moral health, and there is nothing one side can accuse the other of that it is not guilty of too.

That is why Osinbajo’s revelation did not get much more than sneers and jeers. He is working in an administration whose anti-corruption agenda has become more or less reduced to accusations and counter-accusations, and he wants us to be moved by Jonathan’s profligacy.

Since Buhari became president, his cronies too have been accused of corruption, seven million people have lost their jobs between 2016 and 2017, and Nigerians have yet to recover from the effects of a recession. Think of the degree of violence that has occurred under Buhari, from the killings in Benue to Kaduna, Enugu, Taraba, and the abduction of girls in Dapchi. How about those for “shock” and explosion? 

If the country did not go on the streets to protest after Buhari spent half of last year abroad, and up till now he has still not accounted for how much his health cost the country, then what is Sagay worried about?

There is every possibility that Osinbajo is right that Jonathan plundered the nation for his re-election. All the money Jonathan’s administration spent in 2015, particularly in the last few weeks of the election when he was crawling on his knees from churches to traditional rulers must have come from somewhere other than his pocket. But Osinbajo will not get the reaction he expects from Nigerians this time because Buhari himself has not shown superior morals when it comes to the issue of dipping your hands into the national pockets.

1n 2015, Buhari did not finance his campaign with five loaves and two fishes. The money too came from somewhere, and we know it was not his putatively untainted pockets. In fact, Buhari has that mystique about him: he has a way of making people believe he is personally not corrupt even though whenever he has needed money to finance his ambition, somebody’s dirty hands have picked up the invoice. Up till now, nobody in the APC has had the honour or dignity to account for their campaign spending yet they cry about others’ faults.

By 2019, they are likely to do exactly what they accuse Jonathan of: take money out of the national reserves to finance their campaigns too. That is why their moral posturing moves nobody whose head on his/her shoulders can think their way out of a paper bag.

There are lots to be read into the recent report by the Fiscal Responsibility Commission on the debt profile of various state governments in 2016. According to the Punch of March 20 2018, which reported extensively on the report, the debt profiles of about 18 states exceeded their gross and net revenues by more than 200 per cent. The paper quoted the FRC as saying that the debt may have increased by 2017 since “there was no effort by the states to clear them”. It also quoted the FRC as saying that the development was contrary to the guidelines of the Debt Management Office on debt sustainability, which recommends that the debt status of each state should not exceed 50 per cent of the statutory revenue in the previous 12 months. “In the light of the DMO’s guidelines on the Debt Management Framework, specifically, sections 222 to 273 of the Investment and Securities Act, 2007 pertaining to debt sustainability, according to the guidelines, the debt to income ratio of states should not exceed 50 per cent of the statutory revenue for the preceding 12 months,” the FRC was quoted as saying.

Analysis of the FRC report (which was based on the debt profile of the states as of December 31, 2016) showed that most of the states of the federation flouted the regulation as they exceeded their debt to revenue ratio by more than 100 per cent. According to the report, the worst offenders were Lagos (670.42 per cent), Osun (539.25 per cent), Cross River (486.49 per cent), Plateau (342.01 per cent), Oyo (339.56 per cent), Ekiti (339.34 per cent), Ogun (329.47 per cent), Kaduna (297.26 per cent) and Imo (292.82 per cent). Others were Edo (270.8 per cent), Adamawa (261.96 per cent), Delta (259.63 per cent), Bauchi (250.75 per cent), Nasarawa (250.36 per cent), Kogi (221.92 per cent), Enugu (207.49 per cent), Zamfara (204.91 per cent), and Kano (202.61 per cent).

According to the report, the debt to net revenue of the states puts some of the states in even more precarious situation. For instance while the debt to net revenue of Lagos State is a whopping 930.96 per cent that of Cross Rivers State is 940.64 per cent.

The report found that the only states whose debts did not exceed the recommended 50 per cent ratio by more than 100 per cent were Anambra, Borno, Jigawa, Kebbi, Sokoto, Yobe and the Federal Capital Territory.

Several extrapolations could be made from the above set of frightening figures:
One, the amount of revenue accruing to a state has no relationship with its debt profile. For instance Lagos State which has the highest debt to gross revenue ratio of 670.42 per cent (and debt to net revenue of 930.96 per cent), is one of the highest receivers of funds from the Federation Account. It has also one of the best internally generated revenue profiles (thanks in part to the location of prime businesses there). In September 2017 for instance, it received from the Federation Account N8.8bn, compared to say Borno and Anambra which received less than half of what it got from the Federation Account alone during the period and yet stayed within the recommended 50 per cent to revenue ratio. Remarkably none of the top receivers of funds from the Federation Account – Akwa Ibom, Delta, Rivers, Bayelsa, Kano and Kaduna States – made it in the ‘honours’ list.

In fact the states whose debt did not exceed the recommended 50 per cent ratio by more than 100 per cent according to FRC received the following sums in September 2017 from the Federation Account (I am using a random month and year for which data on what was received by all the states are available): Anambra (N4.3bn), Borno (N4.9bn), Jigawa, (N4.67) Kebbi (N4.26), Sokoto (N4.1bn), Yobe (N4.15bn). In contrast, the top receivers of funds, which did not make the ‘honours’ list received the following sums during the period: Delta (N14.2), Akwa Ibom (N12.94bn), Rivers (N12.45bn), Kano (N6.8bn) and Kaduna (N5.4bn). In the same vein, Osun, which is the poorest state in the country in terms of sums received from the Federation Account, (it got only N1.6bn during the period) was not listed among the states with the highest debt to gross revenue ratios. One of the conclusions from this would be the wise words of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the USA: “Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.”

Two, a survey published in May 2017 by BudGIT, (a civic organisation founded in 2011 to simplify the budget and matters of public spending for citizens), found that most states, including some top receivers of funds from the Federation Account and many heavily indebted states, owed workers arrears in salary and pension payments.

Among the States which it found were not owing salaries were Anambra, Borno, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Lagos, Plateau, Sokoto and Yobe. Remarkably while rich Delta State and Bayelsa States owed upwards of six months salaries, Yobe, Kebbi and Anambra which receive less than half of what they get from the Federation Account did not owe any salary arrears. The above raises the question of whether revenues accruing to states are good indicators of the viability of states. It will seem from the above that the capacity for governance and managing resources may be better indicators of state viability than the quantum of money that flows to states.

Three, while oil money controlled by the federal government has made it the central site of the intra elite struggles for power and privileges, a commensurate attention is not paid at what happens at the state levels. In fact while the country’s democracy is in a transition mode at the federal level, it appears to be suffering from arrested development at the state levels. Just consider these: In Imo state, which was found by BudGIT to owe primary school teachers two months arrears of salary and pensioners 24 months arrears in May 2017, the government strangely found enough resources to build statutes of personalities that caught his fancy, including that of Jacob Xuma, former President of South Africa, who is now facing corruption charges in his country. The same Governor gave the ministerial slot for his state to his father-in-law and is now pushing for his son in-law to succeed him. In Kaduna state, an otherwise smart governor had to pull down a house belonging to his political opponent. In virtually all the States, the Governors behave like monarchs rather than elected executives that are accountable to the electorate. Is there any State in the country where the State House of Assembly is not a rubber stamp of the Governor? Is it possible for a State Governor to lose a court case in the State’s High Court? Can the party of a state Governor lose Local Government elections in the State? Compared to what is happening at the state level, the federal government seems to be doing well.

Four, what the different ethnic and regional factions of the political class demand from the federal government, they often negate when it comes to their own states. For instance, while we all extol the unwritten power rotation agreement between the Northern and Southern parts of the country, will it be a crime for the politicians to respect the same principle in their states? Will it for instance be a crime for a power rotation arrangement in Benue, Kaduna, Taraba and several other states in the country so that all the key constituents of a State will have a good opportunity of producing the Governor of the State? Several states in the country need restructuring, not just the federal government.

The hullabaloo over Senators’ N13.5m monthly ‘running cost’
The recent revelation by Senator Shehu Sani (Kaduna Central) that each Senator receives the whopping sum of N13.5m as running cost - on top of N700,000 monthly consolidated salary and allowances - has led to justified anger in the land. I join in condemnation of bogus payments. But I will like also to put a caveat: several comparisons of what the Senators earn with what their counterparts earn in Europe, USA and elsewhere earn, miss the context. The truth is that the electorate in Nigeria (and virtually all parts of Africa) are manifestly different from their European and American counterparts. For instance while the constituents of a Nigerian Senator expect him or her to attend funerals, naming ceremonies and launchings of all hues and to be among the highest donors in such events, there are no such expectations on their American and European counterparts. Nigerian Senators, like political office holders, are also expected to become cash cows and to donate handsomely wherever they go and their presence is acknowledged including in churches and mosques.

This is not a justification for any jumbo pay when most Nigerians are just trying to scrape by but to give a sense of proportion to the conversation.

Again, it is important for us to compare like-for-like. So if we are justifiably angry at what Senators take home every month, we must also know how much top members of the executive and the judiciary take home – in consolidated monthly salary and monthly ‘running cost’.

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Whether at a wedding ceremony, a funeral or a birthday party, on the street, in the motor park, train station, inside or outside the Church or mosque, at Seminars, conferences, at the bar or on a dinning table, it is impossible for two or more Nigerians to have a normal conversation without veering into the mood of desolation that has gripped the nation. Both the Party in power, which ordinarily should be swooning in a muscular mood of joie de vivre, hoisting its victorious flags of achievements, consolidating its gains, and the Opposition Parties which should be exposing the underbelly of the party in power, scheming, plotting and mobilizing how to dethrone them seem to be in a state of stupor, like synchronized swimmers in a sea of confusion and self abnegation. 

Everywhere you turn, we are faced with the dilemma of the blind man chasing a black cat in a dark room. The most visible common denominator that defines the mood of the nation is that we are all a nation of sad people with heads drooping everywhere. Individuals, communities seem to have all turned to the Book of Lamentation for inspiration and solace. Both members of the party in power and the opposition seem to be wearing the same jerseys of sadness. Everywhere is full of stories of perceived and alleged feelings of treachery and betrayal. The nation has never been in this kind of collective national mood of self-doubt.

For most part of the year, we have listened to stories of alleged unfair distribution of offices, positions and privileges among the elites. In response, the federal government has laboured to make the point that this government has been fair in its allocation of offices, traversing ethnic, religious and regional boundaries and that indeed, as one newspaper stated, Christians have done better or have had more opportunities than Muslims or something to that effect. Sadly, this elite monologue suggests that elite interests trump the survival of our people, why they are hungry, sick and dying daily.

Those who govern us have never seriously attempted to answer the question as to what is wrong with our country. They have never attempted to find out what government is doing wrong and how people continue to feel so frustrated.

It reminds me of a little story of a man whose wife left him with his three children and went off to the market. He settled down in his sitting room to read the newspaper and decided that the best way to relax is to bribe the children with something to keep them busy. He looked at the refrigerator and found many oranges. He then peeled and gave each child an orange and warned them not to disturb him.

Shortly afterwards, there was a fight. Rather than asking what the problem was, he simply went out and brought another orange and gave the youngest child who was the one crying. No sooner had dad settled down than little Jonnie let out another cry. Dad opened the fridge, brought out more oranges and started peeling them when his wife came in. Her little son was still crying and she went over to him, hugged him and asked what happened. The little child told her mother that her brothers had refused to give him the seeds of their oranges which he wanted to use to improve his counting skills!

There we are: the father felt that he knew what the children wanted and because there were many oranges in the fridge, all he thought needed to be done was to bring out more oranges. The maternal instincts acted differently. Oil money has closed the rational and creative part of the brains of those who govern us. Money is everything and feeds everything in our lives.

The Nigerian state has become an insensitive father because the fridge of full of oranges. This is why the country is littered with an ocean of abandoned projects, broken dreams and has become a massive graveyard of ideas half-baked and ill conceived. It is unlikely that our circles of sorrow are about to end.

Even the bitterest enemy of Nigeria could never ever have imagined that we will be stranded on a highway to nowhere as we are now. But here we are drinking the daily vinegar of blood and death. All hope is not lost, but we need to urgently call the map-readers in so we can at least trace our steps back to the right path.

On being asked where Daily Trust will be in another 20 years, its founding father, my friend, Kabiru Yusuf admitted that the future lay in stepping up in a world of digital learning. Owners of Daily Trust must learn the lessons that have stunted the north.  I looked at the masthead of Daily Trust and it does show an appreciation of diversity as key to innovation and survival. It is all Men, and all Muslim, bar one Indian. No Woman, Christian. The paper will not survive if it does not urgently lift this dark veil and deliberately cultivates diversity, innovation and ideas. 

Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, contributed this piece to Daily Trust @ 20

Spain's prosecutor said on Wednesday it was seeking a five-year jail sentence and a fine of 4 million euros (£3.5 million) for former soccer player Xabi Alonso over accusations of tax fraud.

The Presidency said last week that President Muhammadu Buhari queried Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Kpotun Idris for not obeying his directive to move to Benue State to arrest the crisis between farmers and herdsmen. During a visit to Benue State last week, the state’s elders complained to Buhari that the IGP did not obey his order to relocate to the state. The president responded by expressing surprise and shock and he said, “I did not know that IG did not stay in the state.”

There was some confusion as to what actually happened because the police denied that their boss received a query. Last Monday the police provided an indirect response to the presidency when it broadcast a one hour documentary on the Nigeria Television Authority’s [NTA] network service. The documentary was impressive because it gave a blow by blow account of IG Idris’ visit to Benue State, with a promise to air another documentary this weekend. The documentary showed that Idris promptly arrived in Makurdi and held meetings with community leaders including Governor Samuel Ortom. He then paid a visit to the Tor Tiv and had a lengthy exchange with him, after which he left the next day for Nasarawa State.

Soon afterwards, the documentary showed him returning to Benue State where he moved around the troubled Loko and Guma Local government areas, variously by vehicles and by helicopter. Not only did he address several meetings of community leaders and urged them to cooperate with the police to keep the peace, but he was also overheard on camera giving instructions about the deployment of the ten additional units of mobile policemen that he redeployed to the state. This video evidence supplied by the police suggests that the IG substantially complied with the president’s order to go to Benue and strengthen security arrangements.

Serious though the situation in Benue was, we think it was wrong of the Benue elders to expect the IG to permanently relocate to their state. This is because he is heading a force that covers 36 states and FCT, with many units serving abroad. He owes it a duty to all of them to maintain an eye on happenings across the country. The confusion arose due to President Buhari’s tendency to order security chiefs to relocate to trouble spots without clarifying the meaning of relocation. For example, in his inaugural address in 2015 he ordered military service chiefs to relocate to Maiduguri. The service chiefs briefly did so and since then they have been frequent visitors to the North East and the war fronts. From all indications they satisfied Buhari’s expectations and they have certainly made a difference in the war against Boko Haram. 

However, the president himself will be hampered in his functions if the service chiefs, including the IGP, are to stay out of Abuja for prolonged periods. In the case of Benue, what was clearly required was for the IG to put in place adequate security measures to stop the incessant killings. By moving ten units of mobile police and leaving behind a Deputy Inspector General, he has succeeded in reducing the killings even though some ugly incidents still occurred.

We therefore believe the brouhaha over the IG disobeying orders was unnecessary. Next time when aggrieved politicians complain against a top security official, we urge the president to tarry awhile and investigate it, rather than accept their word for it.

Daily Trust

As I write this with pain in my heart, the headlines in one or two newspapers   sound familiar enough:  “suspected herdsmen kill traditional ruler, wife and nine others in Kogi”. The story had it that the Onu Agbenema, Musa Edibo and his wife had been killed along with eight other persons while many houses were burnt by suspected herdsmen in separate attacks on Agbenema, Aj’Ichekpa, Opapda and Iyade viallges in Dekina and Omala Local Government Areas. 

These latest killings came less than one week after the first major massacre in Dekina, Bassa and Omala local governemt areas of the state took place with more than 25 people killed.  The governor of the state, Yahaya Bello, promptly took off from the capital and drove for about 14 hours on very bad roads to get to the scene of deaths  to condole the victims. He promised succour for the people and vowed that it would not happen again. Of course it happened again. And if sincere measures are not put in place by government to checkmate these incessant killings, they will happen again. 

Apparently, the more officialdom and other concerned people condemn and bemoan the killings, the more the bloodletting by these merchants of death. The latest voice against continued anarchy is that of the Jama’atu Nasril Islam, the umbrella organisation of the Muslim community in the country led by the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III. The body called on the president to wake up to his responsibility of safeguarding the lives and properties of the people. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka had sounded similar note of warning against allowing Nigeria to drift into a state of anomie akin to Hobbesian state of nature.  

But do all these admonitions have the desired effect? Our search for a way out makes it mandatory that we begin to look beyond the cattle herdsmen. They may not be the sole culprit in this drama of untrammelled tragedy with surreal implications for national cohesion. Crime and criminality, we are begging to learn, have a notorious capacity to give birth to petty but dare-devil adherents in all communities. It is amenable to producing a franchise for anyone so criminally minded especially in communities that have a fertile and conducive atmosphere for such criminal activities.

Armed robbery, for instance, was in existence before the civil war. But incidences of robbery were an occasional thing. But it became more ferocious after the war with the proliferation of illegal arms in hands of trained and untrained gunmen. Before we knew it, it had spread round.

The recent episode of kidnapping started, possibly, from the creeks in the Niger Delta and it became a profitable venture because the victims, mainly expatriates, had to cough out some princely ransom to regain their freedom. It had now assumed epidemic proportion.

What am saying is that kidnappers, both their apprentice and the veterans, have all procured the franchise from the creeks and turned the evil practice into Nigeria’s growth industry. Is it for nothing that Boko Haram has split into various groups - divided along ideological lines but prompted mainly by the possibility of the ransom they stand to extort when they lay their hands on innocent school girls?

As we battle the menace of the Fulani cattle herdsmen, it is appropriate not to lose sight of the fact that these devils with AK 47 may not be the herdsmen we think they are. Tongues are wagging. There are speculations about the ethnicity and nationality of some of the raiders that have fallen in recent battles. Certainly not all of them are cattle herdsmen, not from their look, not from their shape. Certainly not with the kind of arms they are reported to be carrying for their deadly exploits. 

But since the herders have opened the doors to other assorted criminals with sophisticated weapons of mass destruction, they, the flag bearers, must be prepared to take the blame. And the security men must sincerely, and with the fear of God, do what is necessary to safeguard lives and property. 

We know that the police are ill-equipped and poorly motivated, but for goodness sake when the commander-in-chief, gives an order to the Inspector General of Police to relocate to troubled spots at least for purpose of symbolic presence, he should do so, even if he is convinced that disobedience of such order may not carry any consequences.  Truth is criminality grows and thrives in a society where law and order have broken down irretrievably. We pray we don’t get to that point soon.

In a way there is a feeling of déjà vu in this grotesquely macabre narrative of the tales of horror - even of arson, of death and destruction, of sleepless nights, of internally displaced persons who are running from home that is no longer safe and secure. The Western Nigeria of the mid-sixties had the distinction of being the wild, wild west, when Operation Wetie became the unauthorised but potent weapon of revenge or an act of vengeance.

You would recall that soon after independence, the struggle for political supremacy in the country was the next thing to a civil war. The two overlords in the West were the venerable Chief Obafemi Jeremiah Oyeniyi Awolowo, the first Premier of Western Region and leader of Action Group and his deputy in the party, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola. 

Somewhere along the line, the two political juggernauts fell apart over ideological differences and Chief Akintola, popularly known as SLA went into another party, Nigerian National Democratic Party which was in alliance with the Northern Peoples Congress, the dominant party in the North and at the federal level. Akintola capitalised on the alliance to form what was seen as a minority government in West. 

Not done, the new government began to dismantle the structures of the AG, the dominant party of the majority of the people in the West. The matter came to a head when the general masses of the AG supporters rose up in arms; they began to attack the big men who backed Akintola.  Not only did they burn down their homes and properties, they set fire to those they could lay their hands on. Some newspapers came out the following day with the grisly headline: Oba roasted!

The sad spectacle of the then wild West gave rise to Hubert Ogunde’s immortal hit song Yoruba ronu, which was an exhortation for the Yoruba, easily one of the most enlightened group, to Think! Though the hit song was a stinging criticism of Akintola but the entire Yoruba race was forced vicariously to share in the strictures. Today, the so-called wild west has turned a full circle. Not only they are no longer wild, the people have gone far ahead of their contemporaries in education, art and culture, social and economic development. With their level of enlightenment getting to stratospheric level, every one, literate and not so literate, is fully aware of his rights and God save you, if you make any attempt to cheat him.

The other day, President Buhari was said to have admonished Nigerians from the North to learn one or two things from the Yoruba’s level of social and religious tolerance. Perhaps, the North will need to invent its own Ogunde, revamp its education and re-examine its leadership recruitment process to stop charlatans, whose only qualification is their bottomless capacity to steal money, from getting into public office and play any leadership role.

It is time to tell the North, Think. 

Now, Nigerians know how their legislators have been bleeding the system through their jumbo pay

Senator Shehu Sani deserves all the accolades he has received over the disclosure of the jumbo salaries and allowances being paid our senators. The senator representing Kaduna Central District in the upper legislative chamber caused an uproar when he explained that each senator goes home with a consolidated salary of N750,000 monthly, but is equally paid N13.5 million as running cost.

Senator Sani’s disclosure has only confirmed the speculation that our lawmakers are stupendously paid. As a matter of fact, many Nigerians have always believed that they are the most pampered legsilators in the world. So, in a sense,  Nigerians have always known this; but what they did not know was the exact amount involved.

In a country where the minimum wage remains a meager N18,500 monthly, and many youths are unemployed, it is mindboggling that the federal account could be debited with so much for each senator. Similarly, each member of the House of Representatives goes home with N12 million as running cost.

Design and execution of projects are the exclusive preserve of the executive arm of government. Not only do the legislators insist on, and get N200 million projects allocated to each of them, they nominate the contractors and supervise the projects. In some cases, despite release of funds, the projects are abandoned, apparently because the legislators have a hand in the execution. This is an aberration, and an indication that corruption has become the norm.

We are aghast that despite the parlous state of the economy occasioned partly by the sharp drop in the price of crude oil, the mainstay of the economy, the legislators have not deemed it fit to slash their insensitive and unsustainable pay.

The Revenue Mobilisation, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) must be empowered to take full charge of all allowances and emoluments to all public officers, including the politicians. It is criminal for anyone being funded from the Federation Account to do so outside the purview of the commission, and concomitantly, the general public.

These indefensible sundry demands on the federal purse are mere symptoms of the deep malaise afflicting the system. Unless there is a general restructuring of the polity in such a way that the federating units are empowered to generate and expend their resources, the malady will continue, with attention being only occasionally called to the branches.

Nigerians owe themselves a duty to insist that a thorough survey and review of the system is undertaken with a view to fundamentally reworking the Nigerian federal system and ensure that all arms of government and institutions conform to the demand of Rule of Law and probity.

The present standard of the police is unacceptable

The recent invasion by unknown gunmen of a police station in Gbako Local Government Area of Niger State where some detained criminals were released points to the pathetic state of the police in Nigeria today. While the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Dibal Paul Yakadi, reportedly rushed to the community following the development, the state government imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew and mobilised vigilance group to go after the gunmen and arrest them. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident as many police stations in our country have, at different times, been sacked by gunmen.

From Benue to Adamawa to Taraba and Zamfara States, criminal gangs seem to have overpowered the capacity of the state to restore order with hundreds of citizens killed almost on a regular basis. But it becomes a far more serious challenge when the police can no longer protect their own men and barracks from the onslaught of sundry criminal cartels. In January last year, for instance, two officers were injured when hoodlums invaded a police station in Suleja, also in Niger State, to free their detained colleagues. Numbering over 20 and armed with cutlasses, daggers, axes and sticks, the hoodlums reportedly first issued an ultimatum to the policemen on duty before they overpowered them. What that suggests is an urgent need to reform the institution if the men and officers must regain public confidence.

In the country today, especially in recent times, the police have failed in their duty of maintaining law and order, internal security, intelligence gathering and in checking the increasing wave of crime. So incapable of delivering on its mandate has the institution become that a huge slice of the military asset is often deployed to perform police duty with serious implications for professionalism in the military, not to mention the effects of its exposure on civil–military relations.

Meanwhile, the increasing loss of confidence in the ability of the police to secure the civil populace is worsened by the public conduct of many of its personnel. Last year, the Police Service Commission (PSC), the body responsible for the regulation of the police service, announced that it was investigating some state command police commissioners for alleged complicity in crime. Nobody knows what has become of that investigation. But since the processes leading to the recruitment of personnel into many of the security services in our country have been compromised, it is also no surprise that many social misfits are legally carrying arms to terrorise Nigerians.

Indeed, that the strident calls for the establishment of state police have now been endorsed by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) is an expression of concerns and indeed a vote of no confidence in the present structure and management of the Nigeria Police Force. However, as we have canvassed on this page several times, whatever may be the merit in such idea, it is not a silver bullet given that the same subversion that has rendered the federal police ineffectual could easily be replicated in the states. But we agree that the current situation where our policemen have become an easy game for a more sophisticated world of crime calls for a radical solution.

Thisday

I was taken aback a few days ago, when the Federal Executive Council meeting, chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, announced that it had empowered Nigeria, by implication, President Muhammadu Buhari, to sign the Continental Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) billed for endorsement by African heads of state in Rwanda a few days later.

It sounded suspicious, especially as President Buhari, who was visiting the trouble spots in the North, was not at the meeting. To me, it meant either of two things: the President was either trying to fly a kite, or someone was trying to railroad PMB into something. Up till this moment, I don’t know which is the correct position, except to say that I was not surprised, therefore, when news filtered out a few hours to the signing of the agreement that Nigeria was withholding ascent to allow for more consultations. Something is definitely fishy. But it’s only one of the many dizzying things about our country. The more you look, the less you see.

And talking about dizzying stuff, a few days ago, a few friends and I were discussing the comedy of errors we call Nigeria, over a few bottles of not-too-alcoholic drinks at a poolside bar in the Asokoro area, when one of us made a very salient observation about that rich neighborhood of Abuja.

According to him, those who looted Nigeria in the past, as well as those who are presently looting Nigeria, are all living harmoniously in Asokoro.

Those who are declared wanted and those who declared them wanted share fences in Asokoro, and probably meet regularly to share a drink. In fact, it’s not impossible for one to forewarn the other of impending arrest, or for the two to, before hand, agree on the modality for arrest, the lawyers to engage, and which court to take the case to.

The next day, they would then appear in public like adversaries, and the rest of us plebeians would be bursting our nerves and breaking our heads, in support and opposition of them.

I just love this country!

Every morning, I rush out of bed to catch the morning discussion programmes on TV, flicking from one station to the other. And, station after station, I see analysts, armchair critics, the serious and the ridiculous, all hitting their heads on the wall over one issue or the other. If it is not budget, then it’s election timetable, security, herdsmen and farmers, anti-graft war or 2019 elections. People flex vocal muscles over whatever bone the politicians throw at us, by way of national issues. We spit into the air and collect the sputum on our faces. Yet, whenever, the executive badly want anything from lawmakers, they give the legislators whatever they want, and the budget is passed. Ditto for election timetable. I’ve refused to join the debate because there is nothing wrong with any of the timetables. I also know that both INEC and the Presidency on the one hand and the National Assembly on the other hand know that the first timetable favours Buhari, they also know that the NASS version better serves the selfish interests of the lawmakers. But none of them is saying it as it is: they’d rather make it look like they are fighting for our interest. And some of us have bought the deceit, and have since gone to town defending what we don’t understand. What a country! As for me, I’ve chosen to ignore all of them. I have put my TV permanently on Supersport and Telemundo. I can’t come and go and die for nothing.

…And the taxes?

It was from the US that I first picked up the concept of “sin tax” a few years ago, as they moved to impose bigger taxes on spirits, cigarettes and other such indulgences.

Nigeria, under President Buhari (who, by the way, neither smokes nor drinks alcohol), is set to walk the same path.

Yes, those of us sinfully inclined to booze and smoke, including some Buhari ministers, now have to pay a price for the bad habits we picked up along the way.

Of course, it’s no use complaining that many of us smoke to calm frayed nerves, and booze to find solace from the stress and recession-induced hardship that buffet us from every side.

Luckily, the bulk of the new taxes are on imported brands, not on ‘illicit gin’ the derogatory name we shamefully call our own local brews. Thankfully too, Burukutu, Kwaya and Tombo liquor are not affected.

I wouldn’t also know if Kwale weed is included. No, that one is alleged to be illegal, even when it is openly smoked by some of our uniformed personnel.

I think it’s time we officially tell Mr. Fowler to work out a tax regime for weed too.

And, talking about new tax regimes, I am one of those who would be ‘adversely’ affected by the new property tax regime recently rolled out by the Lagos State government. However, as painful and injurious as it is bound to impact on me, I dare say, I haven’t the moral right to fight it. At least, not now. Why? I feel that I, like many other supposedly enlightened Lagos residents, am now paying the price of my complacency to governance and the things happening around me. It is the same price that we’ll pay in 2019, if we fail to go get our PVC today.

I always knew that such a tax law was in the works. I even saw the adverts by the state House of Assembly, inviting Lagosians to the public hearing on the bill. But I did nothing, not even attending the hearings to feel the pulse of the people.

Now that the bill has gone through all the processes and become law, I’m too ashamed to raise my voice against it. All I wanted to do was to appeal to Governor Akinwunmi Ambode and the Lagos House of Assembly to forgive our complacency and take another look at the law.

Thankfully, the governor did just that last week.

Your Excellency, we know you need the money for our mega-city vision, and you just can’t keep borrowing. Sir, don’t misunderstand me: We are not saying we don’t want to pay, it’s just that we don’t have the ability to pay, not with this economy, which, on paper, has continued to grow in leaps and bounds out of recession, even as our pockets remain deeply mired in the same recession.

Many landlords are in court with tenants who have not only not paid their rents but have also refused to vacate the property, not because they enjoy defaulting, but simply because they have run out of options in this distressed, but curiously not recessed economy.

Of course, confiscating the affected property of defaulters would be the answer, but what happens to the confiscated property? Politicians, senior civil servants and their fronts would ultimately buy up all the seized houses at ridiculous prices, if they ever pay. And the tax? The same civil servants would do some creative accounting to balance the books, even when no money ultimately gets into government coffers. We have done it before, and there’s nothing on ground to suggest we have changed our ways.

But there is a lesson in this new property tax law for all of Nigerians: As my brother Kehinde Bamgbetan, the Lagos State Commissioner for Information, advised at a media gathering last weekend, we need to take more interest in what happens at the legislature, rather than being fixated about the executive, which merely implements laws already passed by the legislature. At the time we go after the executive’s jugular, it is often too late to reverse the situation, at least in the short term.

Yes, more looting takes place in the executive arm than in the legislature and the judiciary arms put together, but if we’re ever going to rein in the looting and retrieve our country, the legislature is still our best bet.

Unfortunately, we (including respected professional bodies) do nothing when bills that could redefine our professions are smuggled into the legislature by all manner of self-serving individuals and groups. We either remain aloof, or conclude that the lawmakers would do the right thing.

Oftentimes, they don’t even know what the ‘right thing’ is.

For starters, very few of them employ the researchers we pay them to employ. They just swallow the money as part of their jumbo pay. And woe betide us if some ill-intentioned persons or groups want the Bill twisted in one direction or the other. Money exchanges hands, and the criminals get their way. They’re soon armed with a brand new law to terrorize the rest of us.

But we invited it upon ourselves: They smuggle in a toxic bill, we don’t follow it. It passes first reading and second reading, we’re still not interested. They do public hearing, but the gods clog our ears with wax. We hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing. Suddenly, it becomes law, and then the reality dawns on us, and we begin to raise hell to stop its implementation. But it’s already too late.

Clearly, not all the people we sent to Abuja and the state and council legislatures are there to represent us. They do deal with whoever is pushing for the law, collect what they want and give the sponsors their law, and leave we, the people with the short end of the stick.

So, as the Igbo say, whoever is surrounded by enemies, must necessarily protect himself round the clock. In other words, eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

If we, ordinary citizens of Nigeria, take our eyes off the ball for one second, these politicians would rape us without condoms. And it does not matter if they are PDP, APC, or even SDP. It’s all same of the same.

I guess, that was what Deputy Senate President, Prof. Ike Ekweremadu, tried to warn us about recently. But we soon meshed the timely warning in desperate politicking, accusing him of calling for a military coup. Haba!

The relentless march towards democratic credibility for the governments of the West African region has unveiled a number of dramatic signposts over the last few years. The first ever democratic defeat of an incumbent President in Nigeria in 2015 heralded a changing era for the entire continent even though it was not the first time that an incumbent party had lost a presidential election in the region. Sierra Leone’s venerable Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) had achieved that dubious distinction in 2007. However, at that time, the SLPP’s President Tejan Kabbah was outgoing and the defeat of the party’s candidate, who was seeking to succeed him, by Ernest Bai Koroma of the All Peoples Congress (APC) had been widely predicted. President Koroma has served the full constitutional tenure of two terms and managed to avoid the fate of either Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria or John Mahama in Ghana, both of whom were denied their second term bids by the voters in their nations. However, the presidential election that took place in Sierra Leone on March 7 has resulted in a stalemate that is replete with symptoms of what could be the makings of an even more dramatic electoral upset. This is because the front-runner in the outcome as announced by the National Elections Commission  (NEC), albeit by a narrow margin, is a former military head of state, the SLPP’s Julius Maada Bio.

The inability of any one of the 16 candidates who stood in the election to achieve a majority of not less than 55 per cent as stipulated by the country’s electoral law means that the top two candidates will  contest a run-off in less than a week. Julius Maada Bio, who has been attempting to take the mantle of leadership for the last decade or more, has performed even beyond expectations this time around by emerging as the most popular contestant in the crowded field, and if he does not eventually emerge as the overall victor, that in itself would be a dramatic upset. The APC leadership and their followers have been extremely militant in their campaigning and regimented in their organising. After the polls, they displayed a potential for violent behaviour that led members of the illustrious observer team, including the aforementioned Jonathan and Mahama, to step in to smooth over a dangerous face-off between them and Maada Bio’s supporters during the counting of ballots.

What these symptoms indicate is that in Sierra Leone, where two of the oldest political parties in West Africa still hold sway, the potential for obstacles to be placed on the pathway to democratic change has not been completely expunged. However, the conduct of the election and the stature of the regional observers also indicate that the process has become the concern of a much broader constituency than the confines of the ambitions of local or domestic aspirants to power. The importance of holding successful elections where genuinely popular leaders eventually emerge as the triumphant contestants has now become the concern of regional rather than national audiences. It is not just the electorate of Sierra Leone that is concerned about what the eventual outcome will be, but citizens of the entire West African community feel that they have a stake in Sierra Leone’s ability to choose a leader that is genuinely elected by the majority of its people. To this end, the emergence of Maada Bio as front-runner in the first round is a consequence that many West Africans are curious to understand in the most profound and analytic terms in order to comprehend the true state of affairs in that small but very important nation.

For Nigerians in particular, the emergence of a former military leader will echo with recognisable familiarity but the circumstances surrounding the resurgence of the Sierra Leonean leader are totally unlike those that brought President Muhammadu Buhari to his present occupancy of the presidential saddle. Maada Bio did not overthrow an elected government when he took the reins of power as a military leader. Instead, he replaced a military leader that he had served under when it seemed that a commitment to return power to civilian authority was about to be reneged upon and he duly managed a voluntary handover. He remained discreetly incognito for many years as he changed his career and profile from that of a former military officer to that of a social activist, scholar and private businessman. When he returned to public life he did so by joining the party that formed Sierra Leone’s first independent government and portrayed himself as a nationalist seeking to unify a fundamentally divided polity. His frontrunner status in the latest poll has essentially vindicated his years of struggling to rebuild bridges of communality, especially between Sierra Leone’s south-eastern and northern provinces. In the run-off, his success in achieving this will be put to its most dire test yet.

So far, it appears that even though the race is likely to be a close one, the signals sent by the voters in the first round are indicative of the mood of the Sierra Leonean public at large. The need for change and the restoration of the values that the SLPP’s candidate kept emphasizing throughout his campaign has apparently caught the imagination of a new generation of supporters. It is also clear that a majority of members of the long list of fellow travellers who formed the first roll call of aspirants were flag-bearers of similar sentiments of disenchantment with the incumbent. If these former aspirants now prove to be genuinely committed to the sentiments they expressed in the first round, then the SLPP’s frontrunner status can hardly be overturned. As we have noted before, if such an overturn occurs, it will be an upset of monumental proportions for the expressed wishes of a large proportion of the voters who have already given him a victory. However, if the opposite happens and Maada Bio eventually wins, that, too, would seal one of West Africa’s most historic and dramatic democratic upsets so far.